


Tea

by diaghileafs



Category: The Hour
Genre: Backstory, Christmas, Engagement, F/M, Post-Canon, Spanish Civil War, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 19:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaghileafs/pseuds/diaghileafs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the chain Lix keeps her ring on, breaks, Randall gives her a special Christmas present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea

**Author's Note:**

> Alternating between December 1937, when Lix and Randall are stationed in Treuel, and December 1958.

Lix has never celebrated Christmas, not really. As a small child, perhaps she did, when her father was alive. She remembers her governess worrying that he spoilt her, to which the tall, handsome man whose features are blurred in her memory, replied: _I may spoil her, but is she spoilt?_ And the strange thing was that little Lady Alexis wasn’t, even though nothing had been too good for her in her father’s eyes. Sometimes she finds herself wondering what he would think if he could see her now. She’d be a disappointment, that’s it, that’s what he’d think - working on Christmas Eve, a slave to her typewriter as the sky fades behind her blinds, a skin covering her tea, which has turned black and curdled. Her watch reads four O’clock in the milky light, and she rises before she can over-think things, lest she crumble or cry. She wonders what he would think of Randall, and then she wonders what he’s doing, in spite of herself, whether he’s gone up to Glasgow this year, to Paris, or stayed at home. Maybe she could call him, perhaps if he were at a loose end, they could – of course not.

Lix Storm will not let herself feel lonely, Christmas Day is just another day, it’s as simple as that. She won’t even go to Mass this year. She will not light a candle for Sofia and indulge in fantasies of her being with her because that’s where madness lies. But this year, knowing that her little baby did not even grow into a girl, that Randall is so near, narrows the aperture somewhat. In the newsroom, there’s movement. She waits and counts backwards from thirty before calling out: _Randall? Is that you?_ \- steeling herself for silence, for an unwanted voice, folding her body around the door.

He’s bent over Freddie’s old desk, straightening the objects Bel had placed on it for the boy’s long-awaited in the New Year, he looks pensive, and Lix tightening her grip on the doorframe so that her knuckles turn white as not to go over and hold him.

“Randall,” she says again, his name coming away from the corners of her mouth like a prayer and lingering on her lips, “it’s Christmas Eve.”

His features soften as he turns to look at her, eyes the candid eyes of a child, suddenly leaving her feeling self-conscious. Her hand flutters up to her throat, where her necklace should be. He asks, “do you want to go for lunch?” and she accepts.

 

\---

 

It snows and Lix lies on her back against the cold floorboards, willing it to stop. Outside is a picture of ruined innocence; red on white, white on red – or perhaps she’s just being sentimental; everything makes her feel so hopeless nowadays. She doesn’t really feel like herself at all. She feels like someone else, as though she is a character in a play and she’s looking on from the stalls. She’s waiting for the spiralling anti-climax.

Her head spins with morning sickness and hunger, her hand resting on her abdomen, which is still hollowed, she’s not showing yet. The days have slipped into one, become nothing but a contrast of night and day, though the weather leaves an omnipresent darkness lingering over them. She cannot be sure what day it is, but if it is not Christmas Day, it’s Christmas Eve, and she cannot bear to think of it. She hates Randall. They cannot bring a child into this world, her Christmas wish to God that He can do something, anything to make it alright. She hates herself.

The door clicks, and his footsteps vibrate in the fragile weave of her body before his figure flickers in the bloody twilight, ice lips pressed to her temple. Her fingers catch onto his wrist, slide up to feel the dull pulse of his heartbeat under paper flesh, “you’re freezing,” she murmurs.

He detaches him with a practised ease, that spike of pain causes reverberates down her body; she wants him close, she wants his skin against her skin, and his breath mingling with hers, “so are you.”

And she stretches to kiss him once. Just once, chastely on the lips. Her fingers go up to her own subconsciously to tingle with his warmth. He tastes of whiskey and strong coffee. She _wants_ to hate him.

But she can’t. That’s the problem.

 

\---

 

They’re the only ones in the café, making polite parlour conversation in pantomime whispers, and sipping their tea slowly on purpose; the staff are shooting them scornful glances when they think they can’t see, and sweep around their feet. A china teapot acts as a physical barrier between them but their knees touch occasionally under the lace tablecloth. Lix smiles around her cup, he makes some comment about a passer-by who checked their refection in the window, but says nothing. She didn’t even have to remind him how she likes her tea. Elephants really never do forget, apparently.

She catches him staring at the blank canvas of her neck exposed by her collar, under his eyelashes. The waitress remarks that they really must be closing soon. He blinks, nods.

 

\---

 

“You know we’ll be alright, don’t you?” he whispers into her ear, and she shakes her head.

She half sits, half lies with her head to his shoulder, swirling the dregs of her tea around the cup before passing up for him to drain. The BBC buzzing on the longwave makes their tiny room feel warmer somehow, filled with familiar accents to curb their homesickness and Christmas carols for her to hum and him to tap out against her thigh, “will we?”

His body shifts, hands slipping round her waist to manoeuvre her carefully to look at him, Big Ben symphonising with gunfire from the square below, he watches her tremble in his arms, “marry me.”

Her throat suddenly feels very dry, words sticking and dying away with the tears which threaten to override them, “you don’t mean that,” she rasps, letting her hair fall over her eyes, her thin façade of calm, “you’re just saying that-” _because of the baby, because you think it’s the right thing to do._

He frowns, hurt and confusion colouring his cheeks, “I’m asking you to marry me because I love you, not because you’re pregnant.”

It’s the one and only time he says it, and she doesn’t believe him.

 

\---

 

By the time they get back to her flat, the streets of Shepherd’s Bush are flooded with lampposts, and she has his coat draped over her shoulders. They loiter awkwardly in the doorway after she’s fumbled for her keys and not invited him in for coffee, so close that if she were young and sharp with single malt flowing through her veins she would lean up and kiss him, usher him into her bedroom. But she’s not and she doesn’t, goes to say good-night instead. He grasps her arm gently, “wait, I haven’t given you this,” a small object is produced from his trouser pocket and glints silver in her palm, “it was my mother’s,” his voice shakes and tremors uncharacteristically, “I thought you could keep your-”

“My ring in it,” she finishes, closing her fingers around it, glancing up at him through a film of tears, “thank you, Randall.”

He smiles wistfully, dipping his head slightly and for a second she thinks that he’ll kiss her properly as she aches for him to, before he pecks her dutifully on her cheek, “Merry Christmas, Miss Storm.”


End file.
